THE NEXT DAY
“So, you the one Pearl’s always talking about in his letters,” Randy finally said. “From the way he describes you, I thought you might be a brother, not a white guy.”
“Me and Pearl are brothers,” I said. “Color’s got nothing to do with it.”
Randy smiled. “Try selling that line of shit behind these walls,” he said. “Those Aryan boys will slice you like a piece of ripe fruit.”
“There are quite a few on the outside of these walls feel that same way,” I said. “Lucky for me and Pearl, we don’t give a shit about any of them.”
Randy leaned closer to the glass and lowered his voice, the words taking on a sudden weight. “Just got Pearl’s last letter,” he said. “In it, he says you’re going to do what you can to get me out of here. Now, something like that’s a heavy lift. I heard tell you were a great cop and all back in the day, but how you expecting to pull off something like that? I ain’t in here for no overdue parking ticket. I’m in on a murder one, and there’s no easy walk on that count. And it’s even harder if you got the color skin I got.”
“You’ve been doing too much hard time for me to sit here and sell you a line of shit,” I said. “It is not going to be easy. You checked off every box on the murder-suspect board: multiple priors; you not only knew the victim, you were the last one seen with her before she died; you signed a locked-down-tight confession; you had a connect-the-dots criminal lawyer who took the case because his number was called; and in the courtroom you looked and acted exactly like the prosecutors wanted you to look and act—guilty.”
“That’s all true,” Randy said. “And yet here you are, sitting across from me. Now, why would you make the trip from the big city if you have your doubts?”
“I needed to see you and hear it for myself,” I said. “Before I take this on full throttle, I need to believe, without a hint of hesitation, that I’ll be out on those streets busting hump to free an innocent man.”
“Me telling you I didn’t kill Rachel won’t get me very far,” Randy said. “Stop any con in the yard and he’ll try and sell you that same line. But I don’t know how else to convince you other than with those very words—I did not kill Rachel.”
I nodded. “How about we start with a couple of building-block questions. Why did you sign the confession?”
“That detective was going to get it out of me one way or another,” Randy said. “He was not going to let me out of that interrogation room without my signature on that piece of paper. Not alive, anyway.”
“Eddie Kenwood,” I said. Randy stiffened at the mention of the name. “He wasn’t the one who busted you, though, am I right? Two plainclothes detectives were the ones who brought you in. But he caught the case. How did that come to happen?”
“The two plainclothes were getting ready to process me,” Randy said. “Then Kenwood called out their names and they went into another room, the three of them. A few minutes later, they were gone and I was sitting there, looking up at Kenwood. He told me I belonged to him now.”
“What’d they nab you for?” I asked. “The two plainclothes.”
“Cocaine possession,” Randy said. “Back in them days, I sold some, and what I didn’t sell, I used.”
“When did you first know that you were the one Kenwood was putting the finger on for Rachel’s murder?”
“A few minutes after I was taken into the interrogation room,” Randy said. “He told me Rachel had been found dead and he knew I was the one that killed her.”
“Did you ask for a lawyer?”
“Would it have done any good?” Randy asked.
“No,” I said. “But it does matter if you asked for one.”
“Kenwood never brought it up,” Randy said, “and neither did I. Besides, any lawyers I ever had weren’t of much use. What they saved me in expense, they cost me in prison time.”
“Had you ever met Eddie Kenwood until that day?”
“No,” Randy said. “I’d heard his name mentioned more than a few times. And I knew he was one of those badges who only nabbed brothers and pinned heavy prison sentences on their ass. Rachel knew him, though.”
“Rachel?” I said. “How did she connect to Kenwood?”
“He’d come around to see her now and then,” Randy said. “She was a pretty girl, you know? He’d stop by her place looking for any information she could pass his way. Sometimes that was all he wanted. But sometimes he would want more.”
“So she puts out for Kenwood, and in return he doesn’t bust her for cocaine possession,” I said. “That the long and the short of it?”
“Pretty much,” Randy said. “He’d bruise her up some, too. He liked to go at it rough. That was his thing, at least with Rachel.”
“The connection between Rachel and Kenwood ever come up at the trial?”
Randy shook his head. “No reason that it would. Kenwood made Rachel one of his CIs. And you can’t bring a confidential informant’s name up in court.”
“Who else knew about Rachel and Kenwood’s connection?” I asked.
“Most anybody in the neighborhood,” Randy said. “Kenwood didn’t need to bother hiding it. Who were they going to run off and tell?”
I stayed quiet for a moment. “Back in the interrogation room,” I said. “Did Kenwood lay a hand on you? Did he use physical force to get you to sign the confession?”
“He would have if he had to,” Randy said. “He paced around the room, acting like a fighter waiting for the bell to ring. I was a kid still, but I’d been around long enough to know a man like Kenwood gets what he wants from somebody like me. Held true then. Holds true now. I read the papers and so do you. Tell me, what the hell’s changed from when I first was sent up to today?”
I leaned back in my chair and took a deep breath. I glanced around the drab room, the colors on the wall a faded white, the cement floors cold and stained, the windows small, barred, and barely giving a glimpse of the outside world. I’d been inside many prisons in my life, visiting friends and even some family. I find the inside of these places to be where time goes to die and takes along with it many an inmate.
It is difficult in one short meeting to determine if a man sitting on the other side of a glass partition is guilty of the crime of which he was convicted. Makes it harder when I believe each of us, any of us, under the right circumstances, is capable of taking another life. So I didn’t know—not for sure, anyway—as I prepared to leave that visiting center whether Randy Jenkins was an innocent man framed for a murder he did not commit. I wasn’t sure whether he was cold-blooded or just someone who happened to be in the wrong spot at the worst time.
But I did know Eddie Kenwood. I knew he had plenty of dirt under his nails and he didn’t care who he convicted or why, as long as there was another “closed case” placed next to his name. To me, that made Eddie Kenwood as guilty as any man doing time behind the walls of this prison.
But I did come out of that visit with a piece of information I didn’t have before I drove up: a connection between Kenwood and the victim. That wasn’t in any of the files or trial transcripts I had read. Now, that could end up being nothing more than a bad cop forcing a young woman to do what he wanted in order to stay out of a jail cell. Or it could just be the missing piece that would help flip the lid on Kenwood.
I pushed my chair back and knocked my knuckles against the glass. “You’ll be hearing from me and Pearl,” I said. “We’ll keep you updated.”
“So you’re taking on my case?” Randy asked.
I nodded. “I’ll meet with the chief of detectives and get him to assign it to me and my crew. Then we’ll get to work. And if you’re as innocent as you say and we catch a little luck, we’ll figure a way to get you out of here.”
Randy and I stood at the same time and stared at each other for a few moments. There were tears streaming down the sides of Randy’s face. He took a deep breath and then asked, “What makes you so sure? What makes you so damn sure?”
“There anybody in here you can trust?” I asked. “In your cellblock, in the yard, anywhere? Anyone?”
“Not a damn soul,” Randy said.
“Well, now you got somebody on the outside you can trust,” I said. “And if you’re right, then I’ll make it right. You have my word on that, and that’s all you’ll need.”